To make things worse, though Congress continued to draw bills upon Franklin after the gift of the six millions, it deprived him of the ability to use that fund by forbidding any portion of it to be used without its order. Franklin by prompt action did succeed in intercepting a part of the six millions, which Laurens had taken to Holland, and which was about to follow him to America. Speaking of this in a letter to William Jackson, who had come over with Laurens, and was very angry with Franklin for detaining the amount, Franklin wrote, "I see, that nobody cares how much I am distressed, provided they can carry their own Points. I must, therefore, take what care I can of mine, theirs and mine being equally intended for the Service of the Public." It would have been well for Jackson if he had let the matter rest there, but he did not, and had the temerity to write to Franklin a saucy letter to which he replied in these terms:
These Superior Airs you give yourself, young Gentleman, of Reproof to me, and Reminding me of my Duty do not become you, whose special Department and Employ in Public Affairs, of which you are so vain, is but of yesterday, and would never have existed but by my Concurrence, and would have ended in Disgrace if I had not supported your enormous Purchases by accepting your Drafts. The charging me with want of oeconomy is particularly improper in you, when the only Instance you know of it is my having indiscreetly comply'd with your Demand in advancing you 120 Louis for the Expence of your Journey to Paris and when the only Instance I know of your oeconomizing Money is your sending me three Expresses, one after another, on the same Day, all the way from Holland to Paris, each with a Letter saying the same thing to the same purpose.
One of the transactions, mentioned in this correspondence, is a good illustration of the pecuniary "afterclaps," to use Franklin's term, to which Franklin was frequently subjected. He had agreed to pay for goods for the United States to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds. Instead of the purchases amounting to fifteen thousand pounds, they amounted to fifty thousand, and he persistently refused to pay for them. Jackson then hurried express to him, urged that the goods were bought by order of Colonel Laurens, that they were on shipboard, and that, if Franklin did not pay for them, they would have to be relanded and returned, or sold; which would be a disgrace, he insisted, to the United States. In the end, Franklin accepted the bills for the whole amount, and applied to the French Ministry for the money with which to pay for them. The application was a particularly disagreeable one to him, not only because all the fiscal calculations of the French Government for the year had been completed, but because no part of the purchase price of the goods would be expended in France. At first, the grant was absolutely refused, but at length Franklin obtained it, and hoped that the difficulty was over. It was not. Afterwards, the officers of the ship decided that she was overloaded, and the goods were transferred to two other ships, whose owners required Franklin to either buy the ships, or to pay them a freight bill nearly equal to the value of the ships. This whole transaction was bad enough, but William Jackson at least had the grace to notify Franklin that the bills in this instance were about to descend upon him before their descent. This, we know from a mildly reproachful letter, written by Franklin to John Paul Jones, a Mr. Moylan was not kind enough to do when he drew upon Franklin for nearly one hundred thousand livres for supplies ordered by Jones for the Ariel.
These are but typical instances of the financial complications in which Franklin was involved from time to time while he was drawing water for all the congregation of Israel. Long after their date, bills were still making his life miserable.
This serves chiefly to acquaint you [he wrote on one occasion to John Adams] that I will endeavour to pay the Bills that have been presented to you drawn on Mr. Laurens. But you terrify me, by acquainting me that there are yet a great number behind. It is hard that I never had any information sent me of the Sums drawn, a Line of Order to pay, nor a Syllable of Approbation for having paid any of the Bills drawn on Mr. Laurens, Mr. Jay or yourself.
To John Jay about the same time he wrote, "The cursed Bills, as you justly term them, do us infinite Prejudice." In a letter to John Adams, he speaks of "the dreaded Drafts." At times it looked as if the stream of French bounty was at last exhausted. "With the million mentioned," he wrote to John Adams in substantially the same terms as he had written to Robert Morris two days before, "I can continue paying to the end of February, and then, if I get no more I must shut up shop." This was in January, 1782, when France, in addition to assisting the United States with a fleet and army, had advanced great additional sums to them since the beginning of the preceding year. At this time, for very shame Franklin could scarcely pluck up courage enough to make another pecuniary application to the French Ministry. In giving in a letter to John Jay his reasons for not holding out the hope of pecuniary relief to him, he said, "I had weary'd this friendly & generous Court with often repeated after-clap Demands, occasioned by these unadvised (as well as ill advis'd) & therefore unexpected Drafts, and was ashamed to show my Face to the Minister." In the same letter, Franklin also said: "We have been assisted with near 20 Millions since the Beginning of last Year, besides a Fleet and Army; and yet I am oblig'd to worry [them] with my Solicitations for more, which makes us appear insatiable."
But the most interesting passage in this letter is the following: "You mention my Proposing to repay the Sum you want in America. I had try'd that last year. I drew a Bill on Congress for a considerable Sum to be advanced me here, and paid in provisions for the French Troops. My Bill was not honoured!" Worst of all, when Bills from Congress still showered upon him, after its promise that no more bills would be drawn on him subsequent to a fixed date, he began to suspect that the drawing was still going on, and that the bills were antedated. To no American was the heedless reliance of Congress upon the generosity of France more mortifying than to him. He repeatedly suggested the obligation of his own country to look more to self-help and less to the aid of her friendly and generous ally, and, at times, in his characteristic way, he would demonstrate arithmetically how easy it would be for the United States to support the burden of the war themselves if they would only keep down the spirit of luxury and extravagance at home, and cease to buy so many foreign gewgaws and superfluities and so much tea. "In my opinion, the surest way to obtain liberal aid from others is vigorously to help ourselves," he wrote to Robert R. Livingston. "It is absurd," he said later in another letter to Robert Morris, "the pretending to be lovers of liberty while they (the American people) grudge paying for the defence of it." He was generously prompt always also to ascribe any temporary interruption to the flow of French subsidy to the pressing necessities of France herself. Full, too, always he was of simple-hearted gratitude to France for the princely help that she had given to the American cause. No one knew better than he that this help originated partly in selfish policy, and was continued partly because it had been extended too liberally already to be easily discontinued. "Those, who have begun to assist us," he shrewdly observed to Jay, when counselling him that every first favor obtained from Spain was tant de gagné, "are more likely to continue than to decline." Every appeal that he ever made in his life to liberality in any form took the bias of self-interest duly into account. But he was merely true to his settled principle that human character is an amalgam of both unselfish and selfish motives, when, realizing that the aid rendered by France to the United States originated partly in the glow of a generous enthusiasm for the cause of human liberty and fraternity, he wrote to Robert R. Livingston on August 12, 1782, a letter in which, after stating that the whole amount of the indebtedness, then due by the United States to France, amounted to eighteen million livres, exclusive of the Holland loan guaranteed by the King of France, he said: